North Carolina State University

About: North Carolina State University is a education organization based out in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Thin film. The organization has 44161 authors who have published 101744 publications receiving 3456774 citations. The organization is also known as: NCSU & North Carolina State University at Raleigh.

TinyECC: A Configurable Library for Elliptic Curve Cryptography in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Public key cryptography (PKC) has been the enabling technology underlying many security services and protocols in traditional networks such as the Internet. In the context of wireless sensor networks, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), one of the most efficient types of PKC, is being investigated to provide PKC support in sensor network applications so that the existing PKC-based solutions can be exploited. This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of TinyECC, a configurable library for ECC operations in wireless sensor networks. The primary objective of TinyECC is to provide a ready-to-use, publicly available software package for ECC-based PKC operations that can be flexibly configured and integrated into sensor network applications. TinyECC provides a number of optimization switches, which can turn specific optimizations on or off based on developers' needs. Different combinations of the optimizations have different execution time and resource consumptions, giving developers great flexibility in integrating TinyECC into sensor network applications. This paper also reports the experimental evaluation of TinyECC on several common sensor platforms, including MICAz, Tmote Sky, and Imotel. The evaluation results show the impacts of individual optimizations on the execution time and resource consumptions, and give the most computationally efficient and the most storage efficient configuration of TinyECC.

A common MUC5B promoter polymorphism and pulmonary fibrosis

Abstract: A b s t r ac t Background The mutations that have been implicated in pulmonary fibrosis account for only a small proportion of the population risk Methods Using a genomewide linkage scan, we detected linkage between idiopathic interstitial pneumonia and a 34-Mb region of chromosome 11p15 in 82 families We then evaluated genetic variation in this region in gel-forming mucin genes expressed in the lung among 83 subjects with familial interstitial pneumonia, 492 subjects with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and 322 controls MUC5B expression was assessed in lung tissue Results Linkage and fine mapping were used to identify a region of interest on the p-terminus of chromosome 11 that included gel-forming mucin genes The minor-allele of the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs35705950, located 3 kb upstream of the MUC5B transcription start site, was present at a frequency of 34% among subjects with familial interstitial pneumonia, 38% among subjects with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and 9% among controls (allelic association with familial interstitial pneumonia, P = 12×10 − 15 ; allelic association with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, P = 25×10 − 37 ) The odds ratios for disease among subjects who were heterozygous and those who were homozygous for the minor allele of this SNP were 68 (95% confidence interval [CI], 39 to 120) and 208 (95% CI, 38 to 1137), respectively, for familial interstitial pneumonia and 90 (95% CI, 62 to 131) and 218 (95% CI, 51 to 935), respectively, for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis MUC5B expression in the lung was 141 times as high in subjects who had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis as in those who did not (P<0001) The variant allele of rs35705950 was associated with up-regulation in MUC5B expression in the lung in unaffected subjects (expression was 374 times as high as in unaffected subjects homozygous for the wild-type allele, P<0001) MUC5B protein was expressed in lesions of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis Conclusions A common polymorphism in the promoter of MUC5B is associated with familial interstitial pneumonia and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis Our findings suggest that dysregulated MUC5B expression in the lung may be involved in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis (Funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and others)

A Randomized Trial of Adenotonsillectomy for Childhood Sleep Apnea

Abstract: Background Adenotonsillectomy is commonly performed in children with the obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, yet its usefulness in reducing symptoms and improving cognition, behavior, quality of life, and polysomnographic findings has not been rigorously evaluated. We hypothesized that, in children with the obstructive sleep apnea syndrome without prolonged oxyhemoglobin desaturation, early adenotonsillectomy, as compared with watchful waiting with supportive care, would result in improved outcomes. Methods We randomly assigned 464 children, 5 to 9 years of age, with the obstructive sleep apnea syndrome to early adenotonsillectomy or a strategy of watchful waiting. Polysomnographic, cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes were assessed at baseline and at 7 months. Results The average baseline value for the primary outcome, the attention and executive-function score on the Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment (with scores ranging from 50 to 150 and higher scores indicating better functioning), was ...

The Roles of Price, Performance, and Expectations in Determining Satisfaction in Service Exchanges:

Abstract: In this article, the authors examine the roles that price, performance, and expectations play in determining satisfaction in a discrete service exchange. The authors maintain that the price fluctua...

The Primal-Dual Active Set Strategy as a Semismooth Newton Method

Abstract: This paper addresses complementarity problems motivated by constrained optimal control problems. It is shown that the primal-dual active set strategy, which is known to be extremely efficient for this class of problems, and a specific semismooth Newton method lead to identical algorithms. The notion of slant differentiability is recalled and it is argued that the $\max$-function is slantly differentiable in Lp-spaces when appropriately combined with a two-norm concept. This leads to new local convergence results of the primal-dual active set strategy. Global unconditional convergence results are obtained by means of appropriate merit functions.